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14 ," while confessing that "from Cartesian, Madame Roland became Stoic, from Stoic Deist, and from that she never returned," are candid enough to add that "her life was morally faultless." Another Christian writer says of her, "the only God she invoked was the future. A species of abstract and stoical duty, itself its own judge and reward, supplied the place with her of hope, consolation, or piety."

Here, then, in the person of a pure, conscientious, liberty-loving, and historical woman, we find the refutation of the prevalent idea, that perfection of moral character is dependent on a belief in Christianity. Nor was she one to accept any belief unadvisedly. Sincere and earnest in her convictions, she did not, however, trust solely to those convictions without thorough investigation. Loving truth, as her life testified, more than she loved life itself, hers was a character which with less intellectual vigor had been that of a fanatical religious devotee. In early youth, when